Head of Finnish Drug Police imprisoned for 10 years

The head of the Finnish Drug Police has been sent to prison for ten years after being found guilty of various serious crimes relating to drugs.

This is not the first time that a policeman here has been found guilty of a crime, but this one is very serious because he was heading up Finland’s drug crime squad and because the crimes were very serious.

The case that has been in the courts for several years has been followed meticulously in the media because most Finns have a high regard for the honesty of our police force.

OECD statistics regularly places Finland at the top of trust in the nation’s police force.

There is good reason to believe that this trust will continue to be strong because the felon has been given a fair trial and full rights of appeal.

It has been a costly affair but a necessary one to ensure that no stone has been unturned. Naturally, many senior police officers have been questioned because you can never be sure if they were involved or negligent in exercising their duty of care in reviewing police operations – covert or otherwise.

Now the legal system has run its course and this man will now been sitting in prison for a good number of years while the rest of the police force get on with their important work of keeping us safe.

In the UK, the police force has been down-sized by over 40 000 policemen.

We have seen the same in Finland. The number of police has fallen from 7876 in 2010 to 7000 in 2018. We have 1 policemen for 800 people here while there are 400 people for 1 policeman in Europe on average!

The result of these cutbacks is that the police are just not interested in small property crimes. Burglaries, and bike thefts appear to be left for the insurance companies to handle. The head of the national crime authority in the UK has recently said that organised crimes have grown massively.

Is this what we really want to happen? Of course not, but the above case shows that the police are too few when they are not able to watch over their own. The cost of more police is set off by reduced levels of crime and a safer society. We do not need to breed more criminals by always cutting police forces.